Been welding since my mid teens. That's 60 or so years. I have had probably a dozen metal slivers from grinding dug out of my eyes over the years. Brass and cast iron grinding are horrible, seem to always find their way around goggles into your eyes. Anyway was doing a welding/grinding job yesterday when eating dinner and starting a movie to go to sleep by last night I started getting that familiar burning sting in an eye. Went to the urgent care and was shocked when the doctor said I had nothing in my eye, was just a case of flash burn. I flashed myself many time over the last 6 decades, never got a flash burn! First time for everything.
I've had metal removed from my eyes at least 3, maybe 4 times. I now try to be disciplined but all it takes is that 15 second, "I'm just gonna knock the edge off this." episode to get you. So far, I've avoided flash burns but I understand it's painful.
Take a flash photo of me and my eyes will be closed as a reaction to accidental arc strikes over the years.... Treat your eyes with care....you only get one set.....
I’ve got a record as long as your arm for sliver removals in my eyes. But never a weld flash burn. I’ve been blinded quite a few times by flipping the shade down a little to slow in the old days, or sometimes the auto-darkening doesn’t work right these days. But I don’t think they actually resulted in a burn.
I'm always amazed by the YouTube videos of a guy fabing something up and tacking parts with no helmet and just looking away when he hit hits it with the MIG. Seems crazy to me but I guess it works for them - until it doesn't. I had a torn retina that happened after cataract surgery. Not fun but at least the retina didn't completely detach. Bottom line is like others have said, take care of your eyes.
I can relate to the slivers...the hardest part is watching the disbelief in the medical persons face when I explain that I was indeed wearing safety glasses. I'm convinced those little bastard sparks have guidance systems built in! In the past, I've tack welded items throughout the day simply by closing my eyes, and ended up "sunburning" my eyelids...but haven't yet flash burned my eyes. I'm sure it felt miserable.
Most flash burns from experience welders come by hitting the side of your eyes. We never realize or notice them. Wearing glasses with darkened side shields help.
I had flash burn twice when in my teens. First blamed it on fertilizer or some such thing that I touched. Second time I figured out what it was from. Eyes burned so bad, hurt to keep open, hurt to close. Never let it happen again, in mid life some one told that a raw potato sliced thin and plced over closed eyelids helped to relieve discomfort.
A month and a half ago I had an allen wrench fly from a bolt and hit me in the eye. No pain no discomfort, I just remember thinking……..man that was close. Two weeks later I started seeing floating specs and blurry spots. I went in to the eye doc and that same day I was in surgery for Retinal detachment. Not fun, Vision still hasn’t come back in my left eye. I’m good about wearing my PPE usually. I’m always walking through my woods and getting poked in the face with branches. Now I’d better throw on those safety glasses for everything.
Years ago, I was operating pipe mills that made alum. irrigation pipe. Sometimes, we would have trouble and the operator would look through the darkest screen available and change the adjustment on the tig torch head. What rays that would escape from under the screen would get you in a while. We used to tie red rags to the bottom of the lens holder to cut down on exposure. The rags caught fire in short order. Eye burn is the equivalent of sand in the eyes.
Early on I was “just tacking” something like they did on some TV show and got flash burn. I went to Emerg and had to wait and it was very painful. I didn’t know what it was. When the doc looked at me he asked if I was welding earlier in the day. When I told him yes he asked about a helmet. I said I was “just...”. He replied he should just let me suffer to teach me a lesson. Boy was that lesson learned... And another time I was doing some grinding and had on my goggles as well as a full face shield. Later that night I was in some pain. Went to Emerg and had to wait, wait, wait. The doc checked me out and saw nothing. About 1/2 later a specialist showed up and check me again and found a teeny tiny sliver. I can only surmise that that sliver bounced off my chest and ricocheted under the full face shield and under my goggles. Can’t win for trying...
I did wear safety glasses when I ground metal, but would still get slivers. Finally figured out they were falling in my eyes later from the hair on top of my head. I don’t have that problem anymore. More likely to get flash burn from the reflection up there now.
Slivers get stuck in your eye brows, hair, beard, clothes. You wear your PPE but when you pull your shirt off thousands of slivers go flying. I wear my eye protection, but I have had several slivers removed during the fab on my PU a couple years ago. Most of them including grinding the rust ring out with a tool that looked remarkably like the one I used to get the slivers in the first place.
I feel your pain, got flash burn around this time last year. I was "just tacking two pieces together " with my hood flipped up. I ordered an instant-on helmet the next day. Game changer!! And way more safe
Many times. Had cataract surgery in my late 30s due to a shitty cheap MIG gun that liked to go off while I was close in, positioning stuff. Grinding slivers are/were common, no matter what I did. Always worn glasses, they help some, judging from the spots on my lenses, but even with goggles, they can find a way in. Waited a day once, since I was taking my kids to see a Disney on Ice show, thought I'd be OK. Couldn't stand the roaming spotlights going through the crowd that day, called my eye doc at home when I got back to the house. He met me at his office, and after raising hell with me for waiting to call him, gleefully told me the metal piece had rusted in my eyeball from waiting so long. Said I'd always have a rust spot in my eye. Dunno. My eyes are too screwed up to see it.
What choo talking about Willys36 ! It’s probably not flash burn,,,just your cataracts acting up,,,,lol . Sorry man,,,I was just kidding . It hurts for sure,,,I’ve done it before,,,,feels like that for a couple of days . Tommy
My weld flash story. Enjoy. Learn. Got a flash burn like a mf one afternoon shift when I worked production for FoMoCo on the rear axle housing automated welding line. The burlap curtain which was supposed to be automatically pulled over the welding being done was torn. Wasn't covering anything. I was 20 years old. Vaguely knew about weld flash. Figured if I didn't look directly at it, I'd be okay. Wrong. Peripheral weld flash. 8 hours of it. Got home about midnight, eventually went to sleep with a girlfriend at the time. Woke up about 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning with what felt like glass shards in my eyes. I woke my friend. I said, "Got a problem here. I can't see." She said, (get this) "Of course you can't. It's dark." Granted, she was right. It was night time. Not a single light on. It was dark. But I explained to her that we weren't in a Three Stooges or Laurel and Hardy skit, and she needed to take me to the clinic. The nurse at the clinic swabbed out my eyes with a big Q-tip and she wasn't gentle about it. I protested a couple times. She just said, "Oh c'mon now, it's not that bad." Had to wear patches on my eyes. Got better after a couple days. But I think it may be a factor with my not-so-great vision in my old age.
I don't want to count how many pairs of prescription safety glasses I've replaced because the lenses were so pitted, chipped, and scratched up I couldn't see through them anymore. Those prescription safety glasses have done a pretty good job protecting my eyes, but I know I have been pretty lucky as well. For you guys with the auto darkening helmets, don't completely trust the helmets. Many do not give you much of a warning before they don't work anymore. You can lay a bead, then a minute later, on the next bead, the helmet won't darken. If the change from light to dark seems to have a slight delayed, stop and check the batteries on the helmet. That one slight delay might be the only warning you get.
Got metal in my eye, had it removed, and bought safety glasses with side shields. After it happened the second time I actually started wearing them. It takes more effort now, after I had laser cataract surgery and no longer wear some sort of glasses all the time, but I have been pretty diligent and try to not even enter the shop without wearing safety glasses. Same for flash burns. I had one minor flash years ago and decided on the spot that I never wanted to go through that again.
When my brother was an apprentice boilermaker he would have to get up in the night to put cold tea leaves in a wet rag and put on his eyes to ease the flash burn. He said it felt like he had sand in his eyes.
Flash burns 4 times. Arc welder , mig 2 x , cutting torch . Slivers twice. I have the rust ring and lost some vision. Be safe.
Many years ago I had a machinist job at a company that made lumber handling equipment and lumber drying kilns. I also did production welding on lots of parts and pieces for the equipment. This kid was welding on the kilns, covering them with 10 ga. 4x8 sheets of shiny cold rolled. Lots of continuous, monotonous bead laying. Unfortunately, instead of a full coverage, flip down shield he chose to use a hand held instructors shield, like those Pakistani’s use in the YouTube vids. Well, the next day his face looked like an overripe cherry, ready to split open. Bright red! His eyes were swollen shut! He couldn’t open his mouth. His ears looked like two red saucers. The arc flash bouncing off the surrounding flat panels of the kilns had cooked his face like a solar flare. Burnt to a crisp. Eventually turned into a big scab and peeled off. I think he quit after that.
UPDATE; my eye is a lot better today. Someone mentioned cataracts. I was doing fine I thought vision-wise, had LASIC about 15 years ago because I was wearing readers for distance, other readers for medium, other readers for reading, double readers for fine print. Operation was great, just needed readers for reading. Getting old is WAY over rated. Anyway took my wife to get new contacts and doctor said he wanted to look at me. He said I needed cataract surgery. Had it done and WOW what a difference! I found I had been seeing through an olive green filter for years. I had been thinking my bible was yellowing and would need a new one soon. After surgery its pages are so bright white it about blinds me! I sprung for the $8000 fancy lenses with many diopters and they are fantastic. They have a series of maybe 6 or 10 concentric rings and my brain selects the proper magnification for the proper distance. Magic. I now at the age of 75 need glasses for nothing. And this paragraph has absolutely to do with the topic I started so don't read it.
As I think I mentioned earlier, my biggest eye sliver problems have been with grinding brass (brazing) and cast iron. Can't think of any of my several injuries from grinding steel.
When I was a kid holding things in place for my dad, he’d say “close your eyes and turn your head”. Guess I didn’t one time. mom took me in, I swore it was like I had sand in my eyes. Man it hurt.
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